You're never too old

Saturday

Barbara Daughety recovered from a broken hip to play basketball in a national tournament.

After hip replacement surgery, Barbara Daughety could only think about getting back on the basketball court.

“Lady, I have never been asked by a 76-year-old woman when she can play ball again,” Daughety said her doctor, Scott Stegbaugh, told her after the January surgery.

Daughety has played in the 2013 National Senior Games basketball — with one year of softball — since 2003 and has loved every moment. She, along with four other Kinston senior citizens, play out of Greenville and have made it to National Senior Games competition each year.

Her team made it to the nationals in Cleveland, Ohio, in July, less than six months after her injury.

“I’m very blessed to be able to be back on the court,” said Daughety, a 5-foot-10 former then-Contentnea HighSchool center. She played all four years before graduating in 1954.

In January, she and her teammates were practicing at Alice Keene Park in Greenville.Daughety said she got too far ahead of herself during suicide drills.

“We got to doing it so fast and my feet got tangled up,” she said. “Next thing I know, I’m on the floor.”

She broke her hip on Jan. 28 and had surgery on the 29th. Both her son and daughter were leery about her getting back on the court, although she healed soundly.

“I got along so good,” Daughety said. “You would not believe it. Right now, if I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell which hip it was.”

Her injury moved her to a lower-age team, so she didn’t play with the women she was used to playing with the last 10 years while in Ohio.

However, her hip didn’t at all bother her during the nationals run.

Senior Games and Injury

She and the 65-and-up team out of Greenville/Pitt County travelled to Cleveland for the games that ran from July 19 through Thursday. They faced off with the best senior basketball teams from around the country during the three-on-three tournament, but they were knocked off in the first round.

While Daughety felt she would have advanced further if she was playing with her 75-and-up team, she said it was still enjoyable to be active.

“It really is encouraging,” she said of the Senior Games. “They have the same aches and pains, but they don’t lie on the couch; they get out and do something.”

The Senior Games features a variety of sports.

“When I went there, I saw these women getting gold medals that were in their 90s for swimming,” Daughety said. “They were on canes. They couldn’t hardly walk — but they could swim.”

She said her participation over the years taught her not to give up because of old age.

“You just keep going,” she said. “It’s just wonderful to walk around and see people who are in their old age, but they can still do something.”

Daughety’s two adult children play tennis and probably couldn’t guard her on a basketball court, admittedly.

“I love it,” said Bruce Daughety, Barbara’s son. “It’s an inspiration for me. I hope I can do it as long as she can.”

Hubert Quinerly, Kinston High School girls’ basketball coach, said athletes, of all ages, rely heavily on their lower bodies, and any injury could tremendously affect that.

“The fact that you can … come back and play in a meaningful game, it speaks to her testimony,” Quinerly said of Barbara Daughety. “If someone who is 76 can do it, kids 15 and up can do it with no problem.”

Daughety said on top of being healthy, players must be extremely competitive to go up against some of the ladies they meet at nationals.

“It’s kind of rough,” she said while laughing. “There were some nice ladies. When they knock you down, they help you get up. To be competitive, you have to have several good players that you can run in and out, and we didn’t really have that. We’ve got a few that are really good.”

The Greenville/Pitt County team was out in the first round, so Daughety is looking forward to getting back with her 75-and-upteam to claim a nationals trip in 2015. It will be hosted in Minneapolis, Minn., and Daughety already wears the gold 2015 band around her wrist.

“I never dreamed years ago that at this stage, I could still play and be travelling,” she said.

The Game of Basketball

Daughety began her basketball career as a freshmanat Contentnea High. She said she would score nearly 50 points a game under a much different clock-management system in the 1950s.

She and both her sisters love the game. One, Linda Burke, plays with a Raleigh Senior Games team, while the other, Dot Lang, was part of a Kinston/Lenoir County Sports Hall of Fame-inducted team at North Lenoir. Langstill holds the record for all-time leading scorer at the school.

“My family is basketball,” Daughety said. “All of them are Carolina (fans) except me. I’m a die-hard Wolfpack fan, everybody in Kinston that knows me knows how I love the Wolfpack.”

When she graduated from high school, scholarships weren’t offered to women, but she was recruited by the Federal Bureau of Investigationto play basketball for a year in Washington, D.C.

She had a boyfriend back home who influenced her to come back to Kinston — and they were later married.

Her marriage to Orville Daughety lasted 56 years until his death in 2011, and Bruce Daughety took over his father’s car dealership on Queen Street.

“That year, I didn’t play any basketball because he was so sick,” Barbara Daughety said. “I stayed with my husband, and I didn’t regret a day of that. He passed away, and I started back playing.

“(Basketball) has filled a void for me, you know.”

She said ladies tried to recruit her for a Senior Games team years before she started in 2003, and it was one practice that got her “hooked.”

Daughety said she often sports a T-shirt with an inspirational slogan scripted across the back: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”

She doesn’t plan on hanging up her ball and jersey any time soon.

“I really believe that you stay young as long as you stay active,” Daughety said.

Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 and Jessika.Morgan@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorgan.

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